Those on the hunt for a scapegoat should start with Peter Dutton

If you find it breathtaking that Scott Morrison’s Liberal Party has managed to lose one of its bluest of blue-ribbon seats in what appears to be the biggest by-election swing against a government in Australian political history, it might conceivably have even been worse.

Imagine the level of devastation the furious voters of Wentworth might have served up if the party’s “let’s get rid of Malcolm Turnbull” strategists had got what they wanted in the first place – a Peter Dutton government.

Morrison, as has become clearer by the day, has proved to be a prime minister with the instincts of a door to door salesman, trying to be an everyman for everyone.

Peter Dutton, the man where it all started.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

It hasn’t worked, and certainly not in Wentworth.

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Neither he nor anyone in his government has been able to give a convincing explanation about why Turnbull should have been removed.

Instead, Morrison has spent his days rolling out half-formed “look over there” thoughts, topped during the Wentworth campaign by suddenly suggesting Australia could move its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

It was irresponsible in terms of Australia’s foreign policy formation and cynically patronising to the Jewish voters of Wentworth, who apparently were supposed to believe the timing of the non-announcement days before the by-election was purely coincidental.

But Morrison didn’t have much to work with. Turnbull was extremely popular in Wentworth, and there was always going to be a punishing backlash to the party that jettisoned him.

And because the party’s coal adherents had always been suspicious of Turnbull’s belief in man-made climate change and had ostensibly used aspects of his national energy guarantee to remove him, Morrison was never going to offer anything worthwhile to the large numbers of Wentworth voters to whom climate change was a high priority

Morrison could at least plead, or hope voters noticed, that he wasn’t the prime mover in getting rid of Turnbull.

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One of the more bizarre criticisms of Turnbull during the weeks of byelection campaigning has been that his absence from the hustings was somehow responsible for the Liberals' troubles.

Some of the more excitable hard-right commentators have even accused him of disloyalty to his party by quitting Parliament and causing the byelection in the first place.

Yet Turnbull had always made it clear he would leave Parliament if he were to lose the leadership. And does anyone sensible imagine he’d be attracted to campaigning – having left politics – for someone else to take the seat he’d made his own?

Scapegoats will be sought, but those on the hunt should start with Peter Dutton.

It was his misguided, brooding ambition that has left the Liberal Party in the humiliating position it finds itself in today.

At the very time Turnbull was beginning to make tentative strides towards taking his government to a reasonably competitive position against Bill Shorten’s Labor opposition after the Coalition’s long period in the poll boondocks, Dutton and those around him decided it was the time to strike.

Dutton and his hardline supporters turned out to be incapable of even counting.

They never had the numbers for a clean hit, whatever they claimed, and even senior Liberals who should have known better – step forward Mathias Cormann – allowed themselves to believe the move had irresistible momentum.

The result was that Dutton got his deserved comeuppance and Scott Morrison emerged as the accidental Prime Minister, though no one should imagine he was not motivated by vaulting ambition, too.

The result of this brilliant strategy is that an independent, Kerryn Phelps, has waltzed away with Wentworth, an electorate that had been held by the conservatives for the entire 117 years of its existence, and the Morrison administration is now a minority government.

Imagine what might have happened if Peter Dutton, who lacks even Scott Morrison’s salesman's skills, had got his way.